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Continued from page 3

“The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration.” Challenges in making changes to the site, and a re-design that simplifies individual pages yet turns the news stream into an ugly mess may mean that Facebook needs fewer Hackers and more designers. (-2 PTS)

“We have the words “Done is better than perfect” painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping.” Nothing is better than perfect, especially when you are making decisions about people’s personal data. (-5 PTS)

“We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.” Babies crawl…then walk…then run. Or they break things. Like bones. Or your favorite vase. Thankfully that vase was not $100 billion dollars. Or holding the private information of 800 million people. (-2 PTS)

“Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.” We’re young. We’re hungry. We’ve already built something nobody dreamed could potentially turn into a platform for the Internet – not even Google until they panicked and copied us. (+5 pts)

Total: +2 PTS

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

GOOGLE - Do No Evil

Larry Page, co-founder and current CEO of Google, took over that lead position last year from Eric Schmidt, and his CEO Letter (highlights below) gives us one of the best overviews of the firm’s near and long range plans. One thing is striking – they are leap years ahead of Facebook in capturing a “platform-like” experience for those users who immerse themselves in the Google experience.

The Score

“Google is a large company now, but we will achieve more, and do it faster, if we approach life with the passion and soul of a start-up.” Page is obviously still mentally reconciling what it means to run a behemoth firm. However, with 30,000+ employees, a market cap of more than $205bn and insights into the web movements of almost every individual who uses the Internet, nobody is comfortable thinking of Google as “a startup”. (-5 PTS)

“In addition, we gave many of our products, such as Google Search, a visual refresh, and they now have a cleaner, more consistent, and beautiful look.” Sleek, uncluttered user experiences are one of Google’s best weapons against the new Facebook layout. (+2 PTS)